Beneath Still Waters Read online

Tears welled in her eyes. “No, Sheriff. He didn’t take her.” In frustration, she put her hair in her mouth and Hick watched in horror as she ripped a large chunk of it off. She spit it out and her eyes narrowed and an expression of dark anger, much like her father’s, crossed her face. “She took the baby.”

  “Who?”

  “A lousy woman.”

  “A woman came and took your baby?”

  The tears in Iva Lee’s eyes began spilling down her cheeks. “She said she’d bring her back, but she never did.” Iva Lee’s hands were clenched in fists.

  “You’re sure you didn’t take the baby somewhere and leave it … on accident? Maybe you were going to show it to someone?”

  Iva Lee’s lower lip stuck out. “No, I didn’t take the baby no place. She did.”

  “But Iva Lee, you were at the slough. Maybe you took her there and forgot her.”

  Iva Lee’s eyes were distant, as if trying to remember. “I don’t recollect leavin’ her at the slough, Sheriff. Wouldn’t I recollect that?”

  Hick hesitated, not wanting to put any more notions into the girl’s head. “I don’t know, Iva Lee. Do you know why you thought your baby would be there?”

  Iva Lee’s finger went back into her mouth and she shook her head. Her face grew agitated.

  “When’s the last time you saw your boyfriend?” Hick asked, changing the subject.

  “Right before I got the baby. He said he was gonna take me away and marry me. But he didn’t come back, just that bad lady.”

  Hick drug his hand across his mouth. “Are you sure there was a lady, Iva Lee? Are you positive some stranger took your baby?”

  “Yes … no,” she said hitting her head with her fists.

  Rose moved to her. “Stop that, Iva Lee.”

  Iva Lee clenched her eyes tightly, and stuck her lip out. She stopped hitting herself, but she wouldn’t look at her mother.

  Hick saw the girl retreat back into her mind, her head dropped and she began to hum. With that, he closed his pad and stood. Rose took Iva Lee inside and Bill followed Hick and the doctor to the car. He was shaking and visibly upset. “How could this happen? How could we have not noticed?”

  “She’s small, Bill. The baby was tiny. The way she wears her clothes … it’s not as uncommon as you think,” the doctor said, trying to soothe him.

  Bill looked at Hick with the most desperate, saddened eyes Hick had ever seen. “It was the baby in the slough?”

  Hick nodded.

  Bill’s eyes teared. “It was my granddaughter dumped in there?”

  “Yes.”

  Bill glanced at the house. “You think Iva Lee….”

  Hick shook his head. “Bill, I don’t know. If you just look at motive and opportunity … a strange woman showing up for no reason simply makes no sense. I’ll talk to her again, but I’ll wait a few days.”

  “Who else could it be?” Bill asked his voice cracking. “I remember Iva Lee before … before the accident. I could have had some of that back. Why would she throw her own baby in the slough? You think he…?”

  “I don’t know, Bill. I promise I’ll try to find out.”

  Bill’s face was stricken. “I want you to find that son of a bitch, you hear? I want you to find the coward that slept with my baby. If you don’t, by God, I will.”

  Hick rested his hand on the door handle of his car. He sighed heavily. “I’ll try, Bill. I promise.”

  The next day Hick learned that Bill Stanton had been to the undertakers. He had ordered a small stone for the grave that contained the remains of the baby. It read Birdie Lee Stanton, born and died 1948.

  14

  Hick paused beside his car and took the last drag of his cigarette. The flame was near enough to the tips of his fingers that it burned, not painfully, but enough to get his attention and force him to toss the butt onto the ground and smash it with his foot.

  He drove to his mother’s, pausing in front of the house. The memories of this place were heavy and moist, hovering around him in the smells of grass and lilacs, in the remembrance of the taste of little drops of honeysuckle on his tongue, in the hot sun that burned his skin brown and bleached his hair white. He remembered when these things had made him feel virile, full of energy and vigor. Full of life.

  He climbed from the car, intent on completing some yard work, and was greeted by the sight of his mother wearing her pink duster. Hick never remembered her walking around in a housecoat while his father was living, but it had become a habit since his death.

  She opened the door and kissed his cheek. “I made you breakfast, Andrew. Are you hungry?”

  The gentleness of the question made him nod, although, in reality, he had not been hungry for months.

  She stood beside the table as he ate, rushing to bring him salt, cream for his coffee or milk. “Why don’t you sit down, Ma?” he asked her on several occasions.

  “I’ll eat later,” she replied each time.

  He refused the second portions she was trying to force on him, the food he had already eaten seemed to be stuck somewhere at the back of his throat. Wiping his mouth, he watched a fly crawl across the handle of his fork. It flew away unharmed, and Hick also rose to leave.

  He felt a small hand on his arm and his mother said, “Sit for a minute. Let’s just visit.”

  Hick’s mother was the great buffer of his life. If she was ever sick, he didn’t know it. He had not even realized his father was sick until the doctor mentioned something in front of him. His mother always said the tumors on his face were “sun spots” or “age spots,” nothing for Hick to worry about. So he didn’t.

  In fact, there had been very little to trouble Hick as he grew up. His mother nurtured him, his sister babied him, his father comforted him … it was as if his family had conspired to shelter him, keep him from pain.

  As he looked into her open, loving face, a feeling akin to resentment stirred deep in his soul. They had not prepared him for life. How could they expect him to be a man when they had gone so far out of their way to keep him from learning what that meant?

  He understood now, the heartache in her eyes when he left home to go to war. She knew what he could not—that death and pain were part of every man’s existence and that hatred lurked in even the gentlest of souls, ready to burst forth in ruthlessness and cowardice.

  She searched his face, and he knew she was looking for him, for the boy who left home all those years ago and did not return. She patted his hand. “I’m glad the weather doesn’t seem as hot today.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  They sat in a thick silence.

  “What do you think of your little friend Maggie getting married?” she asked, trying to sound offhand.

  He looked into her face. Her eyes betrayed the disinterest in her voice. They were filled with a questioning misery. “Ma, I want Mag to be happy. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

  Elsie rose and took Hick’s dishes. She set them in the sink and paused there, looking out the window. Then, turning, she said, “I’m sure everything will work out the way it should.”

  He nodded and rose. “I best get started before the sun gets too hot.” She crossed the room and stood on her tiptoes, kissing his cheek. It was a long, lingering kiss, full of sadness and aching.

  The yard at the Blackburn house was not large. It was a town lot, about a quarter of an acre, big enough for a garden, a clothesline, a propane tank, an outhouse, and since his father had installed indoor plumbing, a septic tank. The shed that held the lawn mower was at the back of their lot, butting up against the back of the neighbor’s shed with a small alleyway in between where no grass would grow. Hick would hide things there as a boy. As he grew older and Maggie became more to him than his best friend, he would bring her there and kiss her. The feeling of holding her close made him tingle all over and he never forgot the amazement he felt when he realized that kissing her was much better than playing tag.

  He jerked the door open. The inside was black and hot, th
e lawn mower sat toward the front. In the back were countless little tools and gadgets of his father’s. Old, broken hacksaws hung on the wall, license plates, fishing poles, and broken chairs. There were little projects half-begun … things James Blackburn was going to get around to and never did.

  The dirt dobbers buzzed in the darkness, disinterested in Hick. He reached in and pulled the mower out. He never minded cutting the grass. He liked the whirring sound the blade made as it spun and how the grass smelled as it fell behind him, flat and neat.

  A breeze blew up and he paused, enjoying its rushing coolness. The yard had changed since his father’s death. Trees were growing up in the fencerow, and honeysuckle had all but consumed the small peach tree in the back of the yard. Brush and weeds grew in the corners and patches of nut grass stood out thick and high. He could barely muster enough energy to cut the grass at two houses. The weeds would eventually consume this place.

  The lilac bush still grew, but it was late now, the flowers all but gone. As he looked at the faded blooms lying on the ground, he felt hollowed out, inextricably sad.

  “Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t love me anymore,” Maggie’s voice came back to him from a time when the lilacs were bountiful, their blooms covering the bush, their smell almost sickening in its intensity. He could still feel her fingertips pressing into his jaw, trying to force him to look into her face.

  “I’ve seen some of the world now,” he mumbled, looking away, unable to meet her searching eyes. “I know there’s more. I don’t want to be held back.”

  “Hickory, when have I ever held you back from anything?” Her voice was strained and hoarse.

  Anger filled him. Why couldn’t she just leave him alone? She made him want to forget the ugliness of war and he shouldn’t forget … he didn’t deserve to forget. He looked square into her face and forced the words between his lips. “I don’t love you anymore, okay? Is that what you want to hear?”

  She stepped back, a small cry escaping her, and her eyes welled with tears. Then, quietly, she turned away from him. He swallowed hard at the memory, and then he turned his back on the lilacs and pushed the mower forward.

  The morning dragged on and he had just finished trimming the bushes around the front porch when a car drove up and he turned, surprised to see Adam.

  “Hick, I hate to bother you on your day off, but Miss Stanton come by and said we need to get out to her place quick. Says Wayne Murphy’s been bothering Iva Lee and that Bill’s about to shoot him.”

  Hick dropped the hedge shears and climbed into the car beside Adam. They sped out to the Stanton farm.

  The first thing Hick saw as they pulled up was Murphy’s car parked near the barn, away from the house and not exactly visible from it. Then, he spied Bill Stanton, shotgun in hand, beneath a tree and quickly figured out where he’d find Wayne Murphy.

  Adam parked the car and the two men got out.

  “Hey, Bill,” Adam said, striding toward him.

  “Howdy, Adam, Sheriff. Found this critter creeping around my house and he ain’t got no call to be here.” He pointed up the tree with his shotgun and Hick was amused to see Wayne Murphy perched on a lower branch, looking shaken.

  “Murphy, get down here,” Adam ordered.

  “Tell him to put up the shotgun first,” Murphy said.

  Adam turned a questioning eye to Bill Stanton who replied, “Ain’t gonna put it up ‘cause I might need it.”

  “See?” Murphy said. “See how he’s threatening me?”

  “Shut up and get down!” Hick told him.

  Murphy hesitated, looked at the three men at the base of the tree and then, finally, he gingerly climbed to the ground.

  “Now, what’s going on here?” Hick questioned.

  “I’ll tell you what’s goin’ on,” Bill Stanton replied. “I found this son of a bitch lurking around my barn like some goddamned hound dog, looking for my baby. That’s what’s goin’ on.”

  Hick turned to Murphy. “Well?”

  Murphy looked embarrassed. “Alright, I was looking for Iva Lee. I wanted to interview her for the paper … try to get an idea of who her baby’s daddy was.”

  Bill Stanton seemed to grow before Hick’s eyes. “How the hell do I know you ain’t the daddy? Why wouldn’t you come to her mother or me first?” His grasp tightened around the shotgun. “By God, Murphy, I’ll see you in hell if I get wind you’re the one.”

  Murphy’s eyes widened with fright. “Good God, Bill! Surely you don’t believe I’d do something like that.” He turned to the lawmen for support. “Tell him.”

  Hick merely shrugged. “I don’t know what to make of you, Murphy. I know you ain’t honest, you told me so yourself. I don’t reckon you can appeal to me for a character reference.”

  Murphy looked disgusted. “I can’t believe you think I’d sleep with … that.”

  Stanton was on him like lightning. The next thing anyone knew, he had Murphy shoved against the tree with his fist poised in midair.

  “Stop, Bill,” Adam told him.

  Bill’s face was purple. The veins around his temples were engorged and pulsed with rage. He turned to Hick and Adam and then back to Murphy, and reluctantly, he let the newspaperman go. Murphy’s hands went up to his collar and he checked himself for injury. “How dare you lay a hand on me.”

  Bill Stanton looked at him, his rage clearly visible in his eyes. “That’s my baby you’re talking about.”

  Murphy straightened his shirt. “I didn’t sleep with her, okay? I just want to talk to her.”

  “No,” Hick told him. “She won’t be talking to you today or any other day. She’s a child and you ain’t got no right to be out here. You come around here again, you’ll be breaking the law. If Bill or Rose decide their girl needs to talk to you, they can bring her to your office.”

  Murphy looked angry. “I don’t see how you can possibly tell me who I can and who I can’t talk to.”

  Bill Stanton moved forward. “Well, if he can’t, I can. She’s my daughter, and by God, if I see you up here again, I’ll blow your brains out. You got that, Murphy?”

  Wayne Murphy backed away a little. Leaning toward Hick, he said, “You’re hearin’ this, right?”

  Hick made no reply. He just stared at him with a blank, stoic face.

  Wayne looked from one face to the other and his eyes widened in frustration. “My, God, I can’t believe this! This is news, gentlemen. The people want to know what’s happened … they’ve got a right to know.”

  “We don’t even know the facts yet, Wayne. Until we do, no one has a right to know anything,” Hick informed him.

  “I could find out,” Murphy offered. “Give me five minutes with her … I know how to question people, how to interview them. It’s my job. Let me talk to her.”

  “Murphy, I’m going to give you five minutes to get in your car and be gone, and if you’re not, you’ll be spending a little time in the Cherokee Crossing jailhouse,” Hick told him with an edge of impatience to his voice.

  “What?” Wayne cried. “You’re not even going to let me talk to her?”

  Hick glanced at his watch and made no reply.

  Wayne’s eyes narrowed with anger. “You’ll be sorry for this, Sheriff. I can make your life a living hell.”

  Hick looked into Wayne’s face. “What makes you think it ain’t a living hell already? You’ve got three and a half minutes. You best get.”

  Wayne made one last appealing look and then in frustration, cried out, “You’ll all be sorry. I promise you that.”

  He stomped to his car and climbed inside. His tires spun on the gravel as he sped back toward town.

  “Stupid bastard,” Hick muttered.

  Bill Stanton turned to Hick. “I swear I’ll kill him, Sheriff. I find him up here again, he’s a dead man.”

  “Don’t you worry,” Hick told him. “If there’s one thing I know about Wayne Murphy, it’s that he’s a coward. He won’t be back. Not as long as you’ve got tha
t gun.”

  Adam shook his head and turned to Bill. “Try keeping an eye on Iva Lee. We don’t want Murphy talking to her. He’ll put ideas into her head, and we’ll have a hard time deciphering what really happened to her.”

  Bill Stanton nodded. “Okay, boys. We’ll keep her close. Thanks for coming out.”

  “That Murphy is a pack of trouble,” Adam remarked as he drove Hick back to his mother’s.

  “He’s gonna learn someday that you can’t play around with people. They’re more than just fodder for his rag.”

  When they got back to Elsie Blackburn’s, Pam and the boys were there for a visit. Adam went back to work, but Pam persuaded Hick to stay for dinner. “I cooked it just for you,” she told him. “It’s fried chicken. Your favorite.”

  Hick had forgotten he’d ever had a favorite. He ate, feeling Pam’s eyes on him with every bite. Everything tasted the same to him, some indescribable flavor that reminded him of dirt and cotton. After he ate, Hick went outside to smoke, knowing his mother couldn’t stand the smell of it. He sat on the porch swing and Pam followed him.

  “Pretty good detective work in finding the little baby’s mother,” she said.

  He leaned back and blew cigarette smoke into the air watching it evaporate. “That was mostly, Doc. Besides, we’re only halfway done.”

  “But, if you ask me, it’s the important half. Now at least, the baby has a name. Now she’s a person, not something thrown out like old tires.”

  He said nothing and she continued talking, more quietly, “I’m sorry about Maggie. I know you wish things could have been different, no matter what you say.”

  “Maybe. But things are what they are and there’s no changing ’em.”

  “Hick, can you talk about it yet?” Pam asked in a sad, hopeful voice.

  He ground the cigarette out. “Pam, remember when we were kids and Dale Roberts was selling that pony? I asked Dad if I could have it and he told me he knew I would love it, but I wasn’t able to take care of it. That’s how I feel about Maggie. I just don’t think I could take care of her. I don’t think I could give her what she needs, what she deserves.”

  “You never felt that way about yourself before. You’ve always been able to do what you set out to do. What happened?”